


Battered, Bleeding, Brutal

by orphan_account



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, Gen, Guilt, Guns, Smoking, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 17:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11833866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "But that was then, and this was now."The Red Army, the three men behind it, and how even after the End, life must go on.





	Battered, Bleeding, Brutal

_i._

“I hate you,” he said, voice cracking.

Paul didn’t stop winding the bandages around the gaping red wounds. Little trails of smoke from the still-lit cigarette between his fingers puffed into Tord’s face. “No, you don’t.”

No, he didn’t. He wished he did.

Patryk was somewhere behind them, hunting for anything salvageable in the metal debri. Smoke drifted up from the hole in the earth somewhere below them, as wide and choppily cut as his own injuries. Goopy bits of blood trailed down his cheeks. 

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It didn’t feel real. He knew that he should be feeling pain in his arm, be horrified that he couldn’t seem to move it, horrified that he couldn’t open his left eye without droplets of blood streaming out from within the sclera. But it wasn’t real. It was distant, and cold, and hot as fire, and everything was fake. It had to be fake. He didn’t know what he would do if it wasn’t. Die, maybe. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

“How’s it looking over there, Pat?” his right hand man called out from between gritted teeth. For being a medic, Paul was ridiculously squeamish at the sight of blood.

Tord didn’t hear the other man’s reply. It was far away, a hundred miles away, everything dizzy and turned on its side. Sirens could already be heard in the distance, growing closer, closer, closer, and it rang in his ears like a hundred piercing drums. 

“Boss,” said Paul, right in his ear. It took him a second to remember how to speak.

Finally, after heaving a few breaths, he wheezed out a, “Yes, soldier?”

“I’ve got you all cleaned up. We need to return to base now.” He noticed Paul had stopped touching him, and was now wringing his gloved hands anxiously. Patryk was already back in the car, it seemed. How long had he been out of it? “The police will be investigating the crash sight. Patryk erased all signs of your logo, but they might still suspect you. We need to go.”

For a second, he wanted to tell Paul to leave him. He wanted the authorities to come up to that hill and shoot him full up with a million bullets, slicing him open like swiss cheese until there was nothing left but scraps, just like he deserved. 

But before he could say anything, soft arms were surrounding him, like a hug from a million and one years ago from an old friend, coupled with a loud “welcome back!” Except this time he felt the stiff sleeves of a coat, the scratchy wool of a sweater. This hug didn’t smell like birthday-cake-scented candles and soda. It smelled like metal, pine needles, and smoke. It smelled like home.

And before he could stop himself, his functioning arm was wrapping around his soldier’s back, his breath hitching in the cold air. Everything was wrong and right all at once, good and bad and happy and sad, and quickly tears beaded at the edges of his eyes because despite everything being awful all of the time, this felt… Nice.

All too soon the arms were pulling back. He didn’t move to grab at them, make them stay longer, because honestly he was already being pretty pathetic.

Instead, he spoke, his face still pressed between Paul’s impressive man tits. “Can I… have a minute?”

“Of course, boss. We’ll be in the car.”

The rocks dug into his legs as he maneuvered himself to face out towards the edge of the cliff, legs criss-cross-applesauce, like how Matt sat on the couch when they were all gathered together for movie night. It hurt to think of.

People were already crowding around the crater in the distance, talking on cell phones. They were all standing together in a circle trying to piece together the events that had taken place, like maybe if they could describe the shape of the monster about to swallow them up whole the thing would back down, back away, like counting out loud the number of teeth it had would scare it away.  That was how things worked, in this cold world he sat above. People sat in circles and talked about their demons, how big its gaping maw was, the translucency of its dripping, dribbling spit, the red-brown color of its seventeen oddly-placed eyes, all staring down at the circle as the people in it covered their ears and screamed out how many claws were located on its hind legs, ready to devour the shaking figures describing the contours of its fucked-up spine.

He stood up.

In that moment, the crossroads he had been hovering on the edge of split into only one path. Before that, like an undecided coin toss, he could have gone down the cliff- down the side of the crevice- and on his way down he could have described the red tint of the monster waiting at the bottom to swallow him whole, the way its tongue forked out into two prongs, just how sharp its approaching teeth seemed to be. Then he could have finally gotten some rest, his mouth for once sewn shut so that he couldn’t embarrass himself by opening it. And then Tom could have stood over his dead body, no longer needing to capture in his words the soft edges of the monster’s red sweatshirt and the way its hat glinted in the hot midday sun. And it would have been okay.

But he had never been one for happy endings.

So he stood up, clutching his limp, bloody arm, and went to the car. Inside Patryk was gently clutching Paul’s hand, telling quiet jokes to make the man laugh, under his breath and gravelly from years of chainsmoking. When Tord opened the door to the backseat and got in, the leather rubbed strangely against his injured arm. Paul shot a soft smile at him from the passenger’s side of the front seat, silently saying a hundred thousand things that he could never communicate with words.

And when he offered Tord a cigar from the glove compartment, the kind he knew Tord liked best, that only a few regional mom-and-pop stores in Norway sold, well. He wasn’t one to deny a good smoke.

 

_ ii. _

The arm needed to be amputated.

“The arm needs to be amputated,” said Paul wearily. The antiseptic in Tord’s wound stung like a million wasps digging their stingers into his skin, worming their way all the way down into the bone. It didn’t hurt in the way things normally hurt- it felt like every cell in his left arm was dying all at once, every nerve on fire, every particle of skin rotting away, every chunk of bone molding and dissipating under its own weight.

“Are you sure?” Patryk said from where he was standing by the coffee maker, nervously chewing on his already-worn nails. He sounded just as tired as Paul. “We can always reevaluate back at base, see what our options are-”

Paul shook his head slowly, deliberately. “No. We need to do it immediately.”

The coffee machine made a ding that nearly sent Tord rocketing out of his perch on top of the toilet seat, Paul just barely managing to hold him down. “Why, Paul? Why can’t we...”

All the talking faded away into a distant static as Patryk spoke, background noise to the main dialogue of his thoughts. Paul was giving a reason, gesturing widely with his hands and jammering out answers around his cigarette, but Tord could barely hear him. The cheap motel room they were in smelled like metal and Febreze, with mysterious stains in the carpet and curtains the color of sewage. The news was playing on the cheap TV with a cracked screen, the headline a story on the strange explosion that occurred mysteriously on Dirdum Lane just hours before, with one casualty already confirmed and multiple injuries.

It all felt slow- Patryk yelling something and slamming his fist onto the fake granite bathroom countertop, Paul shouting something back in a language that probably wasn’t English and face contorting in exhausted frustration. An anchorwoman on screen, dyed-blonde hair bouncing up and down as she discussed possible reasons for the wreckage of a strange robot on a cliff with a police chief from the area. Tord could barely hear the sound of his own sobs until he felt a wet splattering on his trembling fingers, and in slow motion he looked down to realize he was crying.

But here he was, sobbing into the back of his hand, in a motel room that had streaks of blood on the cracked floral wallpaper and dead cockroaches in the sink, surrounded by the only two people who even cared about

That was odd. He never cried. Not even when he’d tried to jump out of a moving car in grade 10 and broke both of his legs. Even on the cliff, at that crossroad between a car ride and a coffin, his eyes had merely teared up- nothing leaked from his eyelids, not because he saw it as weak or anything, but just because he couldn’t ever seem to feel anything intense enough to make the tears come out.

But here he was, sobbing into the back of his hand, in a motel room that had streaks of blood on the cracked floral wallpaper and dead cockroaches in the sink, surrounded by the only two people who even cared about him anymore.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said someone through the static. It was too loud and too quiet all at once, the bright lights of the bathroom burning images of every bad thing he’d ever done into his retinas. “Boss. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Soon enough he was being gently held by two rough hands, scooped up into an embrace as he wheezed angry tears into the back of a rough wool sweater made of fabric that caught on his broken fingernails. After a moment another presence joined the hug, arms clutching around his back, thin fingers carding through his ash-covered hair. He kept crying, whispering a hundred sorry’s into Paul’s chest, until the tears stopped coming and he couldn’t muster up anything else to be sorry for. And then they just sat there, three people at the end of the world, listening to the woman on the news speculating if the infamous Red Leader could be involved.

  
  


_ iii. _

It was cold. Freezing, really. Snow covered the ground, covered his shoulders and his head, covered his soldiers and their weapons and their coats and the laces of their boots, turning the whole world a muggy white. It wasn’t the kind of fresh, pretty snow that glittered in the daylight like a hundred thousand shimmering crystals, pristine and soft and beautiful. This was the kind of snow that came from long nights and short days, heavy clouds and torrential pourings of ice and sleet, the kind that left you chilled all the way down to the bone and struggling to gasp out breaths.

His soldiers, his pride and joy, were lined up in formation, trembling fingers tightly latched onto the barrels of their rifles. They didn’t shiver or complain, despite the temperature.

The crunch of boots in the snow filled his ears, like a lost memory he was half-remembering. Unlike heat, cold made minds sharp, spurred a fire in your belly that urged you toward certain victory.

“Is the enemy spotted?” he muttered to the man on his right. Smoke drifted upward from the cigarette in his mouth as he anxiously wrung his hands. Paul always got nervous before fighting, although he insisted anxious and nervous were two separate things- he was anxious, he always corrected, not nervous. Tord couldn’t see the difference. Either way, the man was tense. 

Paul’s voice was like scraping gravel, slow and steady and rough. “Yes, sir. A few kilometers north of our position.”

“Excellent.”

“Boss, if I may,” Paul started tentatively. “Don’t they have the upper hand? They  _ are  _ on higher ground, and they have more men than us. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat?”

Tord clapped his soldier on the back with his robotic arm, leaving the man wheezing for breath. “Don’t worry, old friend,” he said lightly. A smirk barely traced across his face before disappearing. “The new recruits are well trained, and we are all armed to the teeth. Besides, we have something they do not.”

“A lack of common sense?” the man to his left replied sarcastically, reaching out to gently grasp Paul’s hand and flash him a small smile before turning back to his commander. “Some fucking tactics?”

If it had been anyone else, Tord would have had their ass whooped before they could take another breath. Instead, he found himself laughing around the cigar perched between his teeth, a good-natured laugh that came from the pits of his stomach, hearty and booming. “Ah, maybe! But no. They do not have our spirit, our drive. They are fighting just to fight. We are fighting to improve the world.”

“Awfully heroic of you, sir,” said Patryk, a friendly jab to ease tension. His hands were tightly wrapped around his gun- the gun he valued the most, the one he had gotten upon his promotion, with his name carved pristinely into the side of the barrel. Its polished sheen glinted in the brief rays of sunlight that pierced through the clouds.

Tord went to give a reply, but before he could, the phone on Patryk’s belt rang. He swiftly snatched it up and stood at attention, nodding and muttering “okay”s into it before hanging up.

“They’re ready,” he said simply to his commander.

Tord smile grew; it became long, lopsided, predatory, too many canines present in his mouth to make a proper grin.

“Let’s go.”

 

_ iv. _

They were laughing, crowding, howling, on fire with the blaze of victory. Their injuries- the blood on their lips, the taste of metal in their lungs, gunshot wounds in their thighs, long scrapes up and down their chests, bruised ribs- none of them mattered. Boots stomped across the dirty blood-splattered snow like a hundred elephants, loud, primal, powerful.

Tord was carrying Patryk across his shoulders, the both of them laughing with the ferocity of rabid hyenas. Paul was stomping beside them, to their right, the three of them at the front of the army- the front of a lifetime’s worth of work come to fruition.

To say the least, they had won.

“Boss,” wheezed Patryk on his shoulder as they entered the base, voice quivering but full of breathy chuckles. “Boss, you can put me down now.”

“I’m afraid not, friend. Your leg is as broken as a widow’s heart.”

Paul tiredly asked what the hell kind of metaphor that was. Tord only responded by saying it was a simile, not a metaphor.

Throughout the base the soldiers left their flanks, wandering off in raucous groups to get their wounds cleaned, or off to the mess hall to chug more whiskey than their livers should physically be able to hold. Common rooms were sure to be filled with men, women, and others, loudly telling war stories and counting their small victories- headshots, dodged bullets, opponents brutally slaughtered. There would also be private quarters gone quiet, beds gone empty, grunt soldiers out in the snow hauling corpses and lighting funeral pyres.

But that was then, and this was now.

Tord, Paul, and Patryk eventually made it through every checkpoint, the armed guards saluting them along the way. Sometimes Patryk exhaustedly saluted back, strapped across Tord’s shoulders with Paul’s hand lying on his back to keep him from trying to stand. This made some of the guards chuckle, although some just stared back with heavy eyes and deepset neutral expressions of respect. These were the guards who’d been there the least amount of time- they were ones who didn’t know of Tord’s steady hands guiding new recruits’ aim, or the way his lopsided smile creased gently around his eyes. They didn’t know how gentle the two intimidating men beside him were when he clutched at the back of their sweaters with rough nubby fingernails that caught on the wool.

And so they walked. They walked until the hallways changed from being filled with low-ranking grunts to high-ranking soldiers who greeted the three by name, huddled around doorways to their quarters, chatting and smoking, blood running from their broken noses and patchwork bandages wound tightly around bloody knuckles. 

Paul and Patryk’s quarters were as far down that hallway you could go, a wooden door with a brass nameplate on the front with their names- their first names, _PAUL AND PATRYK_ , in bold engraved letters. No last names were used in the army. Many soldiers were in the Red Army to lose themselves, lose their histories, lose their past grievances and traumas. It was counterintuitive to attempt and bring the past they were running from into the place they had run to.

With a little keycard that had been hidden within Paul’s usual pack of cigarettes, they opened the door with a swipe, wandering into the entryway. Paul chucked his keycard and chewed-up cigarette onto a little coffee table covered in framed photos as he passed. Patryk finally got Tord to let him off the smaller man’s back, limping slightly before moving to lean on Paul as they entered the apartment’s little living room. A set of worn, comfortable chairs with quilts thrown over the sides sat in the center, and off to the side sat a small kitchen, complete with a mini refrigerator and a small stovetop. 

After a moment, Paul lowered his boyfriend onto the loveseat gently. The man let out a gentle thanks, and Paul hurried away into a little hallway to get supplies for a splint.

Tord let himself collapse into one of the chairs. It was soft, and he was small enough that he practically swam in its cushions. His bruised legs felt like quivering jelly.

“Hey, boss,” said Patryk quietly, with a certain humor to his voice. “Good job out there.”

A dry chuckle fell from Tord’s bloody and chapped lips, and he found himself kicking off his snow and blood-covered boots onto the cheap rug on the ground. Paul would be angry at him for tracking snow in (he always tried to insist on no shoes in the apartment), but he felt he could handle that. “Same to you, soldier.”

Soon after Paul came back. He gently chewed out Tord for messing up the rug again as he fixed his boyfriend’s broken leg. They laughed at him when he made disgusted faces at the noises the setting of the leg made (wasn’t he a  _ medic _ ?), and when Patryk was done being bandaged up, he got up, despite Paul’s protests and his own obvious limp, and went to make tea.

Eventually Tord and Paul were back to how they had been only a few years ago, in a different place and time- the gruff older man bandaging Tord’s injuries that had probably come from him doing something reckless, while Tord let himself be lost in thought. 

“Sir?”

He looked up, making a grunting noise in the place of a response.

“Do you want sugar in your tea?”

“No, no, no sugar. Pour some vodka in there though, won’t you? I know you two have some stashed in here.”

Paul’s face went red from where he was inspecting a large, blooming purple-yellow bruise splashed across Tord’s chest. Patryk just laughed, little chuckles bubbling up from between his lips. It was the kind of quiet laugh that someone would hide behind their hand, the kind that came out anyway no matter how hard you tried to stifle it. Soon Tord found himself laughing too- loud, boisterous, affectionate and full of humor. Eventually Paul’s blush also went away, and soon all three of them were laughing so hard that tears had begun to stream down their faces. Maybe tomorrow would be harder, maybe tomorrow they would lose. But for that single moment, they were victorious.

In that moment, everything was alright.

**Author's Note:**

> i have been working on this on and off for six months. its not even that good, but im still proud that i managed to finally post it after all this time. eat ass and go far, kids.


End file.
